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The Zero House is a small, prefabricated house that can be easily shipped and quickly erected. It features a full kitchen, bath, and all elements necessary to comfortably support four adults. What sets the Zero House apart from other prefabricated structures on the market, however, is its ability to operate independently, without the need for any external utility or waste disposal connections. High-efficiency solar panels produce power and store it in an onboard bank of batteries. A rainwater collection plane gathers and diverts water into a cistern and all organic waste is processed in a compost unit located beneath the house. Although the house could be prefabricated and transported to a site on two flatbed trailers, currently only customized versions built on-site are in the planning.

Some things never change. Even with the advent of digital cameras, we are still banging our heads together when more than two people want to look at a picture. A small print or an even smaller screen at the back of a camera are just not made to show the latest snapshots to a group. And who wants to lug around a clunky projector all the time? That’s what the engineers at Nikon asked themselves and so they came up with their new Coolpix S1000pj. The compact digital camera is pretty slender, weighs as little as 155 grams and brings its own built-in projector. The camera projects favourite photos or movie clips onto any flat surface at up to one metre in size. Imagine lying in your hotel bed after a long day of sightseeing and looking at the latest shots. Or a party with an instant replay in the living room of what’s going on in the kitchen. Unfortunately, the projector has a very low brightness of only 10 lumen and the room has to be pretty dark. But at least we won’t be banging heads together anymore.

Bluetooth headsets are mostly worn by men; looking like a cyborg just isn’t a lady’s thing. Besides, these devices often interfere with earrings. So why not build a headset that looks like an earring itself. Or a ring. Or both. Like Hybratech’s Orb, the wireless earpiece finger ring. The Orb is a finger-worn ring that twists open to become a comfortable, secure and sophisticated Bluetooth headset for hands-free calling. Bone conducting technology delivers high-quality sound without the discomfort of placing a device inside the ear. A deluxe edition will feature a flexible OLED screen to keep caller ID and calendar reminders quite literally on-hand. It also offers voice-to-text for effortless communication without taking the ring off the finger. So the next time a wife takes off her ring, she might not want a divorce, but just call the kids.

Kids love their unicycles, no question. But once they grow older they want something more substantial, something that has an engine. Aleksander Polutnik from Slovenia might have had the right idea at the right time when he came up with his Enicycle, an electric powered, self-balancing unicycle. Riding the Enicycle is much easier than mastering a unicycle because a gyroscope and a built-in computer constantly measure the vertical angle and accelerate or decelerate the wheel to balance the vehicle. The speed is controlled by leaning forwards or backwards. Steering is done by pushing the footrest on either side. This takes some time getting used to, but the inventor is promising a learning time of less than 30 minutes. Small, light and with a range of up to 30 kilometres, the Enicycle has the potential to become the poor man’s Segway.

Ion engines are the latest fashion in space exploration. Instead of giving a spacecraft a short, big kick with lots of chemical propellant, these engines push it gently with a very light but constant beam of ions using very little fuel. So far, the choice has been either fast and heavy or light and slow. But Ad Astra Rocket Company, founded by a former space shuttle astronaut, is going to change that. Their VASIMR (Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket) is driven by electromagnetic waves and has no physical material electrodes in contact with the hot plasma like current ion engines. In a first stage, Argon is heated to a plasma which, after passing a superconducting magnet, is then accelerated by a radio frequency generator in the second stage. This allows for a much higher power density – up to a hundred times if powered by a nuclear reactor. Smaller VASIMR engines could push the ISS back into orbit or operate as a tug between the Earth and the Moon while large engines could shorten the trip to Mars from six to a little over one month. First tests of the engine were promising.